Skim Milk
by I rub my duckie
Summary: No one's perfect, not even Miss Perfect herself. But no one's completely heartless either, not even Malfoy...


Skim Milk

A short story By Me

Everything that isn't JK's is MINE!!!

The young girl lay on the small hospital bed, hands frozen...her minute form almost swallowed by the covers. They watched over her...they all did. Day after day, they came too see her, to talk to her, but all they got in return was a cold shoulder and a look from her eyes that broke the heart of anyone who dared glanced.

So maybe this was why Draco was the only one who could get her to talk.

He was playing a prank on a couple of third years and was caught by a professor. He was assigned three weeks volunteer work in the hospital ward to help him awaken a "sense of compassion." Ha.

Day after day, for about 4 days, he came and listened to them bitch and moan, every one of them. "My tooth hurts", My head hurts" "I feel sick". And every day at 3 sharp, they most annoying people in his opinion piled in and went into the small back room where "the sick one" was kept. He wasn't sure who it was, but he was sure it was serious. They always left crying. He tried once to call at them, yelling "Hey potty, what's burning?", but with no answer. All his taunts were in vain when they were here, so he gave up and let them mourn in peace.

One day curiosity overcame him and he entered the back room. What, or who, was hideing back here?

It was Hermione Granger.

Well, it was, and it was not. This pile of skin and bones could not be the great Hermione Granger, could it? She seemed to be reduced to a fragile pile of pale white nothingness.

She looked like death. Death personified.

"Granger. You're dieing" He said plainly, with no remorse or distain.

She turned and looked at him, shot something that resembled a sneer, and closed her eyes and cried.

Everyday after that Draco sat in the chair closest to the large door and secretly observed the visits she had at 3 pm everyday.

"Leave. Me. ALONE"

"are you eating 'Mione? Are you well? I love you! I love you!" The youngest Weasly often cried.

Potter just stared at the floor, occasionally saying he was 'here for her'. Everyone else said nothing.

Near the end of his 3rd week of punishment, Draco entered the room again.

Hermione looked at him and pondered a moment. Draco sat down at the foot of her bed.

"So, are muggles really so poor they cannot feed their children?" he asked, with a sneer.

He didn't want her to figure out her condition had been bothering him. Or that he wondered if she would survive and why she was this way to begin with.

Hermione sat up for the first time in days, weeks. Sat up and began to do something everyone wanted her to do. Everyone had been pushing her to do. Day after grueling day...

She sat up and began to speak.

" Ginny said I have skin like milk. Nothing fresh from a cow, mind you. Not whole milk or (heaven forbid) buttermilk, but skim milk: thin and watery, thin layers barely constituting as anything at all; veins like blue rivers beneath my skin. "Hermione stared out a window for a while before continuing.

"I walked over to my living room that day and closed all of my curtains, like I always did. Slowly, I ran my hand over the back of my couch. The cracks in the leather seemed to stick out more to me then ever before. Ginny and I had picked it out together two years ago for my room. She said to me that it would last the longest because leather never cracks or tears. She was wrong, and I knew better. Everything cracks eventually. Even leather couches." Hermione choked out.

Draco sat still, hanging on every word

" She came for me that day, Ginny and her Mum, and Albus. They came together. They new something was wrong…." Hermione laughed sadly. Draco stared in disbelief.

"They cried for me to get help, Molly and Ginny. I didn't listen. So they called the school. I remember when Albus looked upon my face. It was as if he was looking into the eyes of a dieing child. She screamed at me when I wouldn't eat here. I still refuse. She doesn't yell anymore. Not sense you have been here. She said to me one day before you came:

'Hermiome please listen. You hair, it's dead and fading. It's like wires You pull it out in chunks. You eyes, they've lost their fire, their spark. You walk as though you've lived a hundred years and walked a million miles. Your teeth look moth eaten. And your skin...you skin...'

and proceeded to cry." Hermione stopped, overcome by the memories.

"Why, why does it have a hold on me so? Why won't it let me go? " Hermione hung her head down and cried.

"What's gotta hold of you?" Draco asked

"Mia"

"Who?"

"Bulimia" Hermione whispered before breaking out into sobs.

Her sobs tuned into mournful cries, and Draco, who turns out wasn't as heartless as we once thought, offered his shoulder. She grabbed a hold, her strongest grasps so weak from malnutrition. Draco sat their as stiff as a soldier and showed no emotion, his arms wrapped weakly around Hermione's body.

But their must have been compassion and love in that soul of his somewhere, for Hermione felt safe and fell into a peaceful sleep upon the cold shoulder of Draco Malfoy.

That night Draco did something he could never remember doing. As a horrid pain rotated in his gut, a single tear fell from his eyes, and regardless of who was fighting for what, or who hated who for what, or whatever was going to happen…

the words _Skim milk_ will forever be a reminder to Draco Malfoy of the death Hermione Granger was once so utterly consumed by


End file.
